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How To Create A Radio Advert

Writing a Radio Ad

Before you can write an effective radio advert we need to ask three key questions …

Who are we talking to?

Be specific - try to describe a typical customer and relate them to the product e.g. A person needing glasses who also needs shades for their holiday. Give us a picture of one person. How old are they? What sex? How do they relate to the product or service we are advertising? Start your sentence “A person who wants ...

What do we want people to do?

What is the single most important thing we want to achieve from a radio campaign? I.e phone calls, brand awareness, web hits or sales – only ONE per ad.

Why should they do it?

Why are listeners going to respond to this commercial? Remember, One BIG reason per ad. Why should our listeners respond. We are looking for a benefit, not a feature.

Radio is the most intimate, intrusive medium, it’s regarded much more as a friend to people than TV or press. Listeners want to hear people like themselves and they hate falseness.

Paint a Picture

Emotions, moods, feelings, drama, entertainment, humour, you can do it all with a radio ad and you do it by being descriptive. An ad with a personality gives the message a personality.

Every single word of the script should be hard at work either getting the message across or fleshing out the personality of the characters or themes involved. If they don’t take them out.

Don’t dilute the message. Lumpy copy is difficult for a voice over to read. You can solve this by reading your ad aloud. The text should flow, bad sentence structure makes poor radio. Say what you need to and no more.

Conclusion

Just be clear about what it is that you want to say in your head and then say it in a “memorable” way.

If you would like to see some more information about writing your advert or would like to print out this information please click here.